Piso Search: DAY 2

We got up early, bought Wednesday's Segundamano, and started in on any new listings and ones from yesterday we hadn't been able to reach. The first apartment we visited—in the La Latina district—was absolutely darling. Yes, it was on the fifth floor (and by fifth, I mean 6 flights of stairs, given ground floor is floor zero in Spain). No, there was no elevator. But it was nicely furnished, recently renovated, and the space was much better laid out than in the Cuatro Caminos attic we'd seen the night before. In fact, this place even had its own attic for storage. And the price (600€) seemed fair.

The landlady, Maribel, told us of the affection she had for the little place since her parents had given it to her a few years back, and extolled the authentic madrileño flavor of the La Latina district. "I'm not just saying that because of the apartment," she insisted. "You'll find out for yourselves with more time here." The only problem was our inability to comply with the financial requirements set forth by the ayuntamiento, who were helping her rent the place.

For this particular place, it was required that the rent be no more than 40% of our monthly income. We told Maribel we thought we would qualify, based on my scholarship/contract and our savings account statements, even though we weren't exactly sure at that point how much of our savings we'd actually have for living expenses after A.'s last tuition payment was due (stay tuned for whether he gets any scholarship or financial aid...we'll know in September). Alas, would what we offer be enough for her?

What they were looking for were pay stubs, and an aval bancario, too. Now an aval bancario is something you pay 50€ or so per month to the bank so that they can issue you a letter promising to make monthly payments if you fail to. Trouble was, we didn't have a Spanish bank account, and couldn't get one until we had our NIEs, or residency numbers, which we couldn't apply for until we had an address to put down. Quite the catch-22.

Maribel was sympathetic and promised to check with the people at the ayuntamiento to see if our documentation was enough. But not until Monday. We thanked her and left. One thing she mentioned was very informative. It wouldn't be any problem to stay for 10 months even though we would be signing a one-year contract, as long as we gave her one month's advance notice. It was the law, she said. We figured we would be protected in this way throughout the whole city, and that contract lengths wouldn't be an obstacle to us getting into a place.

But at this point, we were a bit discouraged because of the obvious disadvantage we were at, not being able to get an aval bancario. Nearly half the ads we read asked for it. It's a total obstacle for new immigrants searching for housing, but how could we argue it? We decided that from then on, if we liked a place, we would try to persuade them what good tenants we would be, realizing that it was up to us to plead our case and get the landlord to trust us.

We went to a few other other places, including a budget-minded 400€ room in Chueca where the landlord absolutely refused to consider us because we were a couple, and he had explicitly listed the studio as "unipersonal." He stood aghast as we walked in: "Both of you?" he asked A. "Well, yes, she's my wife." Granted, it was as big as other studios we would see, but he just kept going on and on about how you'll see immigrants on the news crammed into small, barely livable quarters and he just couldn't be a part of it. Granted, he would rent it to someone if they just had their girlfriend by on the weekends, but it was too little for two long-term, he insisted. We couldn't get anywhere with this guy, so we thanked him and left.

We wandered about the hip Chueca district and stumbled upon free wi-fi at Fly Café. The British barista set us up and we surfed for more than an hour, gathering more listings and munching on granola and yogurt. I also dropped an e-mail to 5 or so CouchSurfers based in Madrid, hoping to make some local connections and to alleviate our lodging costs in case this search went on forever. (Couchsurfing.com is like hospitality services of old, but it's mostly a young and hip demographic interested in this Web phenomenon.)

Then we made a visit to what we thought was a studio, but it turned out to be an inmobiliario office, and I sternly rejected their pitch, which was to give us a list of some places that fit our specifications...for a mere 300€. That much without any guarantee we'd get in? No thanks. We learned elsewhere that another common agency fee once you sign a contract is to pay them equal to one month's rent. I decided to steer clear of all agency listings from then on.

We went to see one apartment which was very spacious indeed, with a bedroom, living room and even an office, only to find out there was some miscommunication, since they were asking 850€. Oh, and there were leaks, funny smells, and for whatever reason, celebrity magazine tear-outs thumbtacked to every available wall. I dug my nails into A.'s hand: no!

We went to another appointment and waited outside with two other girls for 30 minutes for Enrique to show us up...A. finally called him and oops, he told us he had just closed the deal with someone else. Surprise. While walking to the nearest metro stop, we dropped into an Orange mobile shop and asked about their prepaid cards. I had previously gotten our two Nokia phones unlocked by T-Mobile and knew that their SIM cards were compatible at least with Orange's system. I had checked out other providers' plan offerings, at least cursorily, and for the time being thought Orange was as good as any other. Besides, we kept getting asked for our numbers by people we called, or hitting answering machines.

We dropped 15€ each, which bought us a number plus 12€ of calling time. I figured that the calling rates were high, but no more so than pay phone rates. And we kept running out of minutes on our pay phone cards at the worst moments anyways and then not being able to track down a tobacco shop when we needed to buy new ones.

While at the shop, one of the store employees asked me if I knew any American girls interested in doing au pair work. The reason he asked was because he had four kids (which to him and most Spaniards is a lot). I said, "Sure, I come from just the place you need to know. It's called Utah. Highest per-capita birthrate in the nation. And at a certain university called Brigham Young University, you'll have an unlimited supply of takers. These girls are smart, quiet, and interested in brushing up a second-language to become more attractive in the dating scene. Just what you need." He had me spell out Brigham Young for him before we left.